I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and after having read that it's an inherited disease, I wanted to know if there are measures that my daughter can take to ensure that she gets lucky and lives a life RA free.
I was diagnosed after a prolonged stress period and extreme physical activity so I have made sure to inform her of the risks of stressing out too much and being overly physically active after a certain age but are there any other things that she should put thought into to avoid becoming sick?
Hi Vero,
You cannot change the genetic makeup you passed on to your kids. That said, you are only half of the makeup! I have RA, PA, Sjogrens and Raynauds. My sister and Father had Raynauds, but other than that I have to go to Great Grandparents for any Arthritis type issues other than OA. Eat right and take care of herself and hopefully she will not come down with RA.
Brad
I have never heard about any way to prevent a child from inhereting a disease. It will be in her genetic makeup. I have to children and am worried that at least one of them will get it. I am a product of inherited genes also. Make sure that she knows how to take care of herself, keep active eat right and stay at a good weight,as being over weight cause more stress on joints.
although RA does seem to have a genetic basis in some cases, that's not always the case. Additionally, even if your daughter has a genetic predisposition to have the disease, it doesn't mean that she will get it.
Although stress management is always a good thing to teach your kids, I wouldn't necessarily warn her against being "overly" physically active, as to my knowledge it hasn't yet been proven to be a precipitating factor in triggering the disease (although trauma to the body like being in an accident, surgery, etc. seem to be a trigger at times, but only to people who have the predisposition towards developing the disease). I recommend that you speak to your rheumatologist about this to get the latest updates and giving your daughter's doctor a heads-up that they should be extra vigilant in terms of keeping an eye on possible RA symptoms. It's a bit of a difficult line to walk - you don't want to make your daughter so afraid of getting the disease that she becomes paralyzed by anxiety, however as she is growing up, she will need to be vigilant as well and insist on an early rheumatologist referral should she ever have symptoms.
The good news is that the prognosis for RA has changed significantly in the last 10 years with the new treatment like the Biologics and it is entirely likely that as your daughter grows up, treatment will continue to improve. I read somewhere that it is possible to kick RA into remission if it's treated aggressively in the first six months and it seems reasonable to assume that RA treatment will continue to accelerate in the coming years, thereby making it much more likely that even if your daughter does get RA - again, it's entirely likely that she will not - her experience of it will be vastly different from people who are diagnosed now (and their experience is vastly different from people who were diagnosed 10-15 years ago).
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